[Novosell]

Outer Wilds, Baba is You, Blue Prince, Hades 1&2, Disco Elysium, Hollow Knight, Slay the Spire, Vampire Survivors, Clair Obscur, What Remains of Edith Finch, 1000xResist, Return of the Obra Dinn, Roboquest, Rocket League, Dark Souls, etc. I could go on, and on, and...

Not rehashes. Original, phenomenal games covering damm near every genre and if there is a genre you're missing, I can find a modern game to match.

Do you actually engage with modern games?

[chongli]

Those may be some amazing games you listed but none of them scratch the itch that some folks have for twitchy NES games. For some reason, modern indie developers never try to emulate the tight, twitchy, highly responsive controls of NES games. Instead, they go for floaty, slow acceleration-based, more forgiving controls.

The puzzle games in your list have no equal though. The NES is pretty light on puzzle / adventure games, though it did receive really nice ports of the MacVenture games (Deja Vu, Uninvited, Shadowgate) as well as Maniac Mansion, and it has a couple of unique ones with Nightshade and Solstice that blend in a bit of action while remaining primarily adventure games.

[CoolGuySteve]

A large part of this is because the latency on modern TVs can be anywhere between 4.7ms and 150ms so games have to allow for a lot of slack in their input.

The NES and SNES had 1-3 frames of latency depending on the game.

[Grazester]

Don't modern TV's come with a game mode to reduce this latency (turns off any kinds of image processing)?

I have a 12 year old Samsung LCD monitor that is advertised as 2.5ms

[CoolGuySteve]

Yes but like all non-default settings, a large portion of the player base doesn't have it enabled. Games have to be designed for a large market, not just high end OLED buyers.

Even then, most VA/IPS/LED displays have something more like 20ms of latency in game mode due to slow LCD refresh rates. Controllers are also randomly delayed by 2.4GHz interference.

This 8bitdo Pro 2 on my desk has 18ms latency all the time. It actually kind of sucks and it's one of the faster wireless controllers.

[Grazester]

The Dual Shock 5(wired) and Dual Shock 4(wireless) were some of the best controller where it comes to latency. https://rpubs.com/misteraddons/inputlatency

Edit:// those 8bitdo controllers are pretty terrible looking at that list, Wow.

[jasomill]

Yes. I get about 5 ms latency on my 2024 LG OLED (a bit more at 120 Hz, a bit less at 144 Hz).

But there are other sources of latency that stack.

[vunderba]

Oh they absolutely do - you just might be unfamiliar with them. I grew up playing Ninja Gaiden, Megaman, etc. There's definitely an audience for 2D games with extremely tight controls. Off the top of my head:

- Shovel Knight

- Spelunky 1/2

- Rogue Legacy

- Cuphead

[chongli]

I’m familiar with all of those games. They’re few enough in number that I see the same small set brought up every time I make this point.

I think they’re the exception that proves the rule. There are fewer of them (noteworthy ones anyway, I’m sure there’s a long tail of obscure ones) than there were popular games of this kind on the original NES. I think Derek Yu’s release of UFO-50 is indicative of his similar need to scratch that itch!

[vunderba]

I think noteworthy is the key. Others with tight controls and timing that I can think of (that are less known) are Downwell, Caveblazers, Celeste, Super House of Dead Ninjas, Tiny Barbarian DX, VVVVVV.

And these are just ones that I've personally played.

[chongli]

I have heard of Celeste and I have played through VVVVVV. I will check out the others.

Celeste is kind of an example of what I was talking about though. The game gives you a ton of movement options and "floaty" air control with a lot of maneuverability. NES games never did that. The controls were simple and highly responsive, but generally very "committal."

The only recent game I know of with controls that really felt like a NES game was La Mulana. That game did not allow you to reverse directions in the air after a jump. Once you jumped forward you were fully committed to the arc of that jump.

[vunderba]

I see what you're going for. We're sort of struggling to come up with a common nomenclature . For me when I hear floaty controls I think of games where the physics are loose (SMB) as opposed to tight controls (Megaman).

Personally, I really hate being forced to commit to a jump direction like you would in Castlevania.

But there are quite a few NES games that give you control in the air: Megaman, Ninja Gaiden, SMB2 as Peach, Contra, etc.

Different strokes for different folks.

[techpression]

NES games are pretty darn slow and not very twitchy at all compared to something like Super Meat Boy. I’m not into the genre too much but I know there are quite a few more of them. And Street Fighter still requires very exact frame execution if you want to take it to the extreme.

I’m as nostalgic as anyone, but games today are just so much better in every way.

[anyfoo]

Dark Souls and Hollow Knight were among the listed titles, come on.

[chongli]

Those may be difficult games but they don't have the twitchiness of a game like Super Mario Bros. They're on the order of 1/4s to 1/2s maneuvering (with great anticipation) whereas SMB is loaded with 1 frame tricks (1/60s). It's an order of magnitude difference.

[yellowtaxi9sols]

This still feels like a lack of knowledge on the medium, and a bit of faffery around the meaning of "twitchiness". There are still a ton of momentum platformers being made, UFO 50 alone has like 5 included. Even ones with full on mechanical restrictions, such as Yelow Taxi Goes Vroom, which tried hard to go the opposite way, and has has no conventional jump button to preserve momentum with, it's almost entirely about precision setup and aerial readjustment.

[anyfoo]

Huh? 1 frame tricks are the top shelf of speedrunning moves, definitely breaking how the games are designed to be played by orders of magnitudes.

Speedrunners use 1 frame tricks in more modern games as well. It is considered extremely hard even amongst the already insane speedrunning community, no matter whether the game is SMB, Odyssey, or anything recent.

[chongli]

Of course it's extremely hard but you can't do it at all on modern games with unresponsive displays. The point is that when you press the button in SMB, the action happens on the screen an order of magnitude faster than a modern game. Modern games have slow, floaty, laggy controls.

It's not just games though. Computers have done the same thing [1]. Modern PCs are an order of magnitude slower, latency-wise, than an Apple II.

[1] https://danluu.com/input-lag/

[reactordev]

This is why on Rock Band, you had to “calibrate your TV” because of input and audio lag from when the game generated it.

As a game dev, this is true. Old hardware input was very fast whereas today it’s software and it’s 50ms give or take. Add more milliseconds for your TV to refresh. It was common to see 150-250ms lag.

[darth_aardvark]

Have you tried UFO 50?

[chongli]

I haven't. I'm a huge fan of Derek Yu though, so I need to!

[YurgenJurgensen]

2019, 2019, 2025, 2019, 2019, 2017, 2017, 2021, 2025, 2017, 2024, 2018, 2020, 2015, 2011.

I only see three games here less than five years old. The oldest is from three console generations ago. Do /you/ actually engage with modern games? Remember the time you’re comparing to had 5-year console generations. This is like someone on the release date of the PlayStation 3 saying that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is a “modern game”.

[Novosell]

I just listed a few games off the top of my head, and in contrast to the person who I responded to having listed a bunch of 90s/early 2000s games. In comparison, mine are certainly modern.

If you want "modern", 5 years old maximum, then we have, for example:

Backpack Battles. Elden Ring(Nightreign). Tainted Grail. Monster Train 2. Escape from Duckov. Nine Sols. Hollow Knight Silksong. Black Myth Wukong. WH 40k Rogue Trader. WH 40k Space Marine 2. Spirit of the North 2. Patrick's Parabox. Stacklands. Balatro. Ender Lilies/Magnolia. Tunic. ANIMAL WELL. Dome Keeper. Inscryption. Reus 2. Astral Ascent.

I just had a scroll through my steam library and picked some games I really like/love that felt like they should be less than 5 years old. I've not double checked. This is what I meant by "etc. I could go on, and on, and...". I wasn't saying that cause I ran out of games to list.

[YurgenJurgensen]

Why were those games on the top of your head? If things were as healthy as you claim, surely your head would be full of exciting new titles? Would you have, in 2006, brought up Sonic the Hedgehog 2 or Doom as titles to show modern gaming’s superiority over the Atari 2600?

[Novosell]

Why are you trying to do weird gotchas instead of engaging with the discussion? I don't get it.

And comparing time periods like that isn't proper, 10 year old tech now is a lot more similar than 10 year old tech was in 2006. 1996 and 2006 are vastly different tech-landscapes. 2016 and 2026? Barely different.

Or do we wanna pretend the leap from Doom to Crysis is the same as the leap from the Witcher 3 to Clair Obscur? Modern is a relative term and we did not define it at the start of this conversation.

So for you to just join in afterwards and retroactively try to apply your own definition, which you are yet to share, on to my original comment just doesn't make much sense?

What are you trying to prove? Who are you trying to convince? And of what? Chill out man.

[YurgenJurgensen]

So you’re admitting that “barely” any progress has been made in a decade. Perhaps you can use that fact to divine what you’re missing.

[Novosell]

Ok, last comment from me as I truly believe you're just here to be annoying at this point, but I'm also passionate about this subject.

There has been barely any technological progress in the last decade, yes. Which is what makes the last 10 years not compareable to the 1996-2006 period. During that period, you had massive technological innovation which could inform and enable innovations in gaming at a greater rate than the current technological trends allow for. You can only do the 2D to 3D transition once. We can't really go into 4D.

But that's TECHNOLOGICAL progress. Gaming is also an art. Art doesn't "progress", it just changes. Harry Potter isn't more "progressed" than the Epic of Gilgamesh, it's just different.

I could write much more, but you clearly don't actually have an opinion, as you never respond to anything, you just try to "gotcha" me, and even when presented with good modern games you just decide they're invalid cause they don't fit your undefined definition of modern. Then when you do get "modern" games given, you dismiss them cause they weren't presented first.

This is so dumb man, truly.

[framapotari]

Elden Ring, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Baldur's Gate 3, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Dredge, Blue Prince, Balatro, Astro Bot, Hades II, Silksong, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, Pacific Drive, Death Stranding 2, Split Fiction

[YurgenJurgensen]

It’s too late for that. You crafted that list after seeing the criterion, so it does nothing to disprove the point that the games people think of when they think about “good modern games” aren’t actually modern.

[iamjackg]

Maybe your point was that, but that's not the point the person you replied to was addressing. Nobody was arguing about the specific definition of "modern."

The original commenter made a very clear claim: that the most recent "peak" system was the Xbox, which was discontinued in 2005, and that everything after that has been a rehash.

[YurgenJurgensen]

If the pace of quality titles is such that people have to go fishing through multiple decades to find what they believe to be a convincing-looking list of titles to compete with the OG Xbox, that is an indication that yes, even with more games coming out, fewer good games are coming out.

[framapotari]

Haha what? Do you believe that it's somehow been proven that "people" think about good modern games in some specific way? Based on a comment from one person?

[YurgenJurgensen]

This is not the first time this thread has been made, nor will it be the last, and there’s someone (or at least two people in this case) who does it every single time.

[reactordev]

I’ll never hesitate to brighten the mood with heated debate over best games of history ;)

[framapotari]

Well in that case this is clearly the official opinion of The People.

[phatfish]

Of course there are good modern games, but I agree there was something special about the first 3D generation of hardware (hardware cheap enough to be in home consoles at least) and the games it enabled.

Only VR has come close recently, but that hasn't hit in the same way because it is still too expensive and cumbersome.

[reactordev]

This. Half-life was amazing, and not because it was Quake 2. It was a story. Less about blowing stuff up with guns and more about uncovering the secrets of Black Mesa. Then came along mods…

The first one was Team Fortress. Remember that? Still strong today as a ftp title TF2. The second one was a spec-ops style delta force mod (I can’t remember the name) but it gave the 3rd modder the idea that a modern setting could work. Counter-Strike was released as an early alpha on my forum and the rest was history.

I mention this because this was a tuning point from fixed function pipelines to programmable pipelines (shaders).

There was this awe of what we can do, what could be possible, and today’s modern games are a fulfillment of that. I feel this same sense of awe when it comes to some of these foundational models. It’s just incredible what they are capable of.

In reality, while AAA titles have been pumping out annual titles to keep shares high and pigs fat, there have been some wonderful indie titles, smaller budget games, that have made a significant impact on the games industry as a whole.

[anyfoo]

I loved Half Life 2, and it was highly influential, but that influence lives on.

Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, Dark Souls, and Return of Obra Dinn were among the mentioned titles. All of these games tell a story, each of this game does it in its own, magnificent way.

You act a bit like those kind of games are hard to find, but some of them are highly popularized best sellers that keep getting remasters (I don't mean remakes), and still find a huge audience in entirely new YouTube Let's-Plays alone.

[lgl]

> Half-life was amazing, and not because it was Quake 2.

Half-Life used the GoldSrc engine [0], based mostly on Quake 1 and also some parts of QuakeWorld and Quake 2

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GoldSrc

[skhr0680]

It was just called the Half-Life engine then. It was developed in parallel with Q2, and in general has feature parity with Q2, with a few huge features that they were able to add because of the extra year of development like skeletal animation.

[reactordev]

Which is why I mentioned it. The engine itself was a copy pasta blend of idTech stuff with their own architecture.

[reactordev]

Ok, I’ll give you Rocket League. That’s an entirely new spin on a genre I didn’t see coming. The rest are just RPGs or platformers you like. Good games, but not innovative. Yes, some new franchises have been born and some successful indie titles have been launched but most of the market share in the games industry is held by the top 5.

Yes, I have over 1,000 games in my Steam library going back to 1999. I engage in most games that make the top 500 and have so since I was a teenager making games myself.

[TimorousBestie]

I hope I never become this jaded and cynical about video games.

[reactordev]

Keep playing them for 20 years :D

[anyfoo]

Into the Breach only came out 8 years ago, but I'm still playing it vigorously.

I'm sorry to say, your nostalgia-colored-glasses are so strong, you're actually blinded by them. I grew up in the same gaming era as you (started around early to mid 90s, but the peak was later), and I too have fond memories. But there undeniably has been some magnificent progress in pretty much all aspects of gaming.

Somewhere between 2005 and 2010, I thought I had outgrown gaming, and that no game would have anything to offer to me anymore. But years later I learned that that was just because I was stuck thinking that JRPGs were the pinnacle of gaming, it turned out that I had grown out of those. Obviously your story will be different, but I bet there is some story to you somewhere.

[lgl]

This! Both FTL and Into the Breach are evergreen games imho.

[Novosell]

I've been playing games since I could hold a controller basically, so 26-ish years, and I think modern gaming is phenomenal. I feel sad for you, but it is what it is. Just your loss in the end.

[reactordev]

Modern gaming is a micro transaction DLC hellscape. Are you serious?

Are they fun? Yes, they are designed to be addictive. So you spend money on pixels.

[Novosell]

None of the games I mentioned have micro transactions.

Outer Wilds, 1000xResist and What Remains of Edith Finch all moved me to tears. I still can't casually listen to the soundtracks of Outer Wilds or 1000x, as they simply evoke too many emotions.

Stop conflating Call of Duty and the like with "modern gaming".

You're jaded, and I feel sad for you.

[anyfoo]

Maybe give it another try? I have been playing lots of games for the past few years, some vigorously. Not a single one of them has a single microtransaction, because that's an immediate turnoff for me.

[rpdillon]

I've been gaming for twice as long as you. You're picking the wrong games.

[charcircuit]

What’s wrong with paying for entertainment?

[buttercraft]

I've been playing them for 35 years and I don't share your opinion at all.

[mietek]

So, is Outer Wilds a RPG or a platformer?

[reactordev]

Open world game but also a mystery game as we’re a couple others mentioned above. Those go back to Carmen San Diego and Sherlock homes series. Open World, we’ve seen plenty of those.

[gambiting]

Well, nothing new has been invented since checkers, if you really think about it hard enough and reduce everything to a few buckets of games that everything can fit neatly into, then everything is just a mystery game or just open world or just a platformer. Again, I have a feeling like you're just looking at it mechanically and not how these elements work together to produce a game that is larger than just the sum of its parts. Outer Wilds has puzzles and open world and mystery element to it - and all of those have been done before. But has anyone else combined them this way to produce a game with this narrative? No, I don't believe so(happy to be proven wrong, as always).

Like the other commenter said - I hope I don't become jaded like this about video games, it still brings me joy to see how every new game twists the known formula a little bit more and in new and exciting ways, I believe there are several nieches where we haven't seen the game of that genre yet and I can't wait to see it emerge and how and who is going to do it.

[reactordev]

Have other games put together open world and mystery? Yes.

I have a feeling you haven’t played those games otherwise you’d see the similarities.

Yes, I am ABSOLUTELY looking at the mechanics of the game. I’m also looking for innovation. Take something someone tried (maybe it was a big part of their design) and make a full blown out version of it. Pushing the genre in either a new direction or opening one up. Outer wilds did neither. Not to say it wasn’t a good game. That’s not at all what I’m saying. I’m saying outside of those that played it, it will be forgotten. It changed nothing. It came, it endeared, it left.

[soulofmischief]

Have you played Outer Wilds though?

I'd finished a playthrough of RDR2 in 2022 and thought I was done with gaming forever, that nothing would ever be able to touch that level of experience again. I stopped playing for months, completely having lost interest.

Then I discovered Outer Wilds, went in completely blind, played in VR, and had one of the most engaging experiences of my life. It's a true gamer's game.

[Rohansi]

Comparing Outer Wilds to Sherlock Holmes is way too big of a stretch for me. There are mysteries in both, yes, but it's the mystery of the (game's) universe vs. crimes.

I'm curious if you think this way about movies/TV too. It's very strange to me to just dilute things down to their genre(s) and then expect innovation to come out as new genres.

[gambiting]

>>Good games, but not innovative

Calling outer wilds or Clair Obscur "not innovative" just tells me you haven't played these games from start to finish, and I don't mean any offence saying this. Unless you mean just mechanically?

[YurgenJurgensen]

What’s innovative about Clair Obscur? Its battle mechanics are clearly heavily inspired by Paper Mario, Shadow Hearts, and Legend of Dragoon, it inherits a bunch of mid-level design stuff from Dark Souls, and its story structure is extremely standard, also borrows a lot of worldbuilding from Dark Souls with a hint of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Kingdom Hearts. It’s competent, somewhat refreshing and not actively consumer-hostile, and it’s a sign of how bad things have gotten that that’s all it takes to be heaped with praise.

[gambiting]

Oh don't get me wrong - mechanically I actually think it's boring as hell, which is why I asked OP if he only talks about mechanics. But I will say that in terms of story and world building it's exceptional - so many games nowadays are just some kind of variation on a standard fantasy/scifi trope, CO has a completely "fresh" repertoir of enemies and locations that feel new, and I didn't have any clue where the story was going until act 3 - I think its exploration of grief and the ability to make you bond with characters while not unique, it's definitely up there with the best video games ever made(imho).

>>also borrows a lot of worldbuilding from Dark Souls

I see that comparison a lot and I don't see it, and I've played every From Soft game from start to finish. Maybe the painted world from DS3 is sorta-kinda similar, but not really?

[reactordev]

I have played both. I stand by my statement.

[rpdillon]

What did you think after you got into room 46 of Blue Prince?

[anyfoo]

So Dark Souls is just another RPG, and not innovative?

[throwaway173738]

It was the first rpg I played where there was so much attention paid to continuity you could see all the other areas in the skybox.

[YurgenJurgensen]

That’s not a great example to pick, given that Demons Souls exists.

[reactordev]

And that was a successor to Kings Field…

These kids don’t know.

[anthk]

Innovative? Check Blade/Severance.